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 I 
 I 
 
 BY 
 
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THE 
 
 CONTEMPLATIVE 
 
 QUARRY 
 
 BY ANNA WICKHAM 
 
 LONDON 
 
 THE POETRY BOOKSHOP 
 35 DEVONSHIRE STREET, THEOBALDS ROAD, W.C 
 
 1915 
 

 Uniytrsity 
 
 of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. — Amourette : The Woman and the Philosopher - 5 
 
 II. — The Singer ----- 7 
 
 III. 7 
 
 IV.— The Egoist 8 
 
 V. 9 
 
 VI. — The Hermit - - - - - 10 
 
 VII.— The Cheriy-Blossom Wand - - - 11 
 
 VIII. — A Song of Morning - - - - 12 
 
 IX. ..---.- 13 
 
 X. — Meditation at Kew - - - - 14 
 
 XI. — Song to the Young John - - - - 15 
 
 XII.— The Affinity 16 
 
 XIII. — The Contemplative Quarry - - - 18 
 
 XIV. — Spoken to Adonis - - - - 18 
 
 XV. — The Mummer - - - - - 19 
 
 XVI.— The Marriage - - - - 20 
 
 XVII.— Artificiality - - - - - 22 
 
 XVIII. — Ship near Shoals - - - - 22 
 
 XIX.— The Revolt of Wives - - - - 23 
 
 XX. — The Free Woman - - - - 25 
 XXI. — For Poets, Workmen, Women, and Children 
 
 in Orphanages - - - - 25 
 
 XXII.— The Faithful Amorist - - - 26 
 
 XXIII.— To a Young Boy - - - - 27 
 
 XXIV.— Eugenics 28 
 
 XXV.— Sehnsucht 29 
 
 XXVI.— Genuflection - - - - - 29 
 
 XXVII. — Comment - - - - - 30 
 
 XXVIII.— The Dull Entertainment - - - 30 
 
 XXIX. 30 
 
 XXX. — The Religious Instinct - - - 31 
 
 XXXI. 31 
 
 XXXII.— The Slighted Lady - - - - 32 
 
 XXXIII.— Gift to a Jade - - - - 32 
 
XXXIV.— Song 34 
 
 XXXV.— Magnetsim - - - - 35 
 
 XXXVI.— Friend Cato - - - - 36 
 
 XXXVII. — Susannah in the Morning - - 37 
 
 XXXVIII.— Dedication - - - - 37 
 
 XXIX.— The Tired Man - - - - 38 
 
 XL. — Self Analysis - - - - - 39 
 
 XLL— To D. M. 40 
 
I— AMOURETTE. 
 
 (The Woman and the Philosopher.) 
 
 She: TV/HAT shall I do most pleasing man? 
 W I will delight you if I can. 
 
 Shall I be silent ? Shall I speak ? 
 Since I love quick I'll show that I am weak : 
 ril say the wisest strangest thing I know 
 That you may smile at vanity, and love me so. 
 
 He : How can her wisdom flourish and endure 
 When her philosophy is but a lure, 
 And to the arsenal of charm is brought 
 The ammunition of her thought ? 
 I count her breathing as I sit ; 
 I love her mouth, but disregard her wit. 
 
 She : More than love, and more than other pleasure 
 I desire thrilling combat of the wit. 
 As far as I can measure 
 This man is rare, and therefore fit 
 To be a combatant, let me say one thing new 
 That I may gage him so, to prove my judgment true. 
 
 (Here follows an argument,) 
 
She : Sir it is just I own 
 
 That I am overthrown, 
 And I take strange deHght 
 That I am beaten so to-night. 
 
 He : Madam you are a sensualist, 
 
 And, being such, you shall be kissed. 
 
 She : What husbandry is this ? 
 
 What thrift, that we should kiss 
 
 On the first night we meet ? 
 
 What is your need to eat the seed. 
 
 When growth might be so sweet ? 
 
 From this first pleasure that you sow in me 
 
 It is my power to raise a gracious tree. 
 
 And, maybe, I will give you a kind grove 
 
 Where you may sit though sunny days, and love. 
 
 He : This answer, which is rare, 
 Is luring as your hair. 
 I go from you this night in pain. 
 But Madam, I will come again. 
 
 She : Dreams, dreams, stay with me till I sleep, 
 Then let oblivion steep 
 My senses in forgetfulness. 
 That when I wake, I may forget my loneliness. 
 
II— THE SINGER. 
 
 IF I had peace to sit and sing, 
 Then I could make a lovely thing; 
 But I am stung with goads and whips. 
 So I build songs like iron ships. 
 
 Let it be something for my song, 
 If it is sometimes swift and strong. 
 
 Ill 
 
 ONLY a starveling singer seeks 
 The stuff of songs among the Greeks.. 
 Juno is old, 
 Jove's loves are cold. 
 Tales over-told. 
 By a new risen Attic stream 
 A mortal singer dreamed a dream. 
 Fixed he not Fancy's habitation, 
 Nor set in bonds Imagination. 
 There are new waters, and a new Humanity. 
 For all old myths give us the dream to be. 
 We are outwearied with Persephone, 
 Rather than her, we'll sing Reality. 
 
IV— THE EGOIST. 
 
 SHALL I write pretty poetry 
 Contolled by ordered sense in me 
 With an old choice of figure and of word, 
 So call my soul a nesting bird ? 
 
 Of the dead poets I can make a synthesis, 
 And learn poetic form that in them is ; 
 But I will use the figure that is real 
 For me, the figure that I feel. 
 
 And now of this matter of ear-perfect rhyme. 
 My clerk can list all language in his leisure time ; 
 A faulty rhyme may be a well-placed microtone, 
 And hold a perfect imperfection of its own. 
 
 A poet rediscovers all creation ; 
 
 His instinct gives him beauty, which is sensed relation. 
 It was as fit for one man's thoughts to trot in iambs, as it is for me. 
 Who live not in the horse-age, but in the day of aeroplanes, to 
 write my rhythms free. 
 
I HAVE no physical need of a chair ; 
 I can double my body anywhere : 
 A suitable rest is found 
 Upon a stone or on the ground. 
 But it is needful that I feed my wit, 
 With beauty and complexity, even when I sit. 
 Had I a splendid broad philosophy 
 I were high man without complexity. 
 I'd fling myself on any natural sod 
 To scan the zenith and remember God. 
 But it is needful man shall strive 
 With tortured matter, so to keep alive. 
 Idle man would never live to age : 
 He would run mad and die in rage. 
 When fat accumulations cloy, 
 War brings her sword to ravage and destroy. 
 That through the smoke of the consuming real 
 Man sees a clearer and more sure ideal. 
 
lO 
 
 VI— THE HERMIT. 
 
 FOOLS drove him with goads and whips 
 Down to the sea where there were ships. 
 And he was forced at the risk of his neck 
 To find a refuge on a stranger's deck. 
 
 Then that ship sailed away- 
 Far from the land that day, 
 He watched the sky, and mourned to be 
 In such a dread captivity. 
 
 But from a rift of flying cloud 
 Burst a tempest quick and loud ; 
 A burning bolt struck the strange deck 
 Bringing the ship to sudden wreck. 
 
 So the poor slave swam free 
 
 Over a quick calmed sea : 
 
 On a new coast-line he was thrown. 
 
 And claimed a virgin island for his own. 
 
 In the quiet island was such pleasure, 
 In solitude he found such treasure, 
 He took rude tools 
 And carved a splendid monument to fools. 
 
II 
 
 VII— THE CHERRY-BLOSSOM WAND. 
 (To be sung.) 
 
 I WILL pluck from my tree a cherry-blossom wand, 
 And carry it in my merciless hand, 
 So I will drive you, so bewitch your eyes. 
 With a beautiful thing that can never grow wise. 
 
 Light are the petals that fall from the bough. 
 
 And lighter the love that I offer you now ; 
 
 In a spring day shall the tale be told 
 
 Of the beautiful things that will never grow old. 
 
 The blossoms shall fall in the night wind, 
 And I will leave you so, to be kind : 
 Eternal in beauty are short-lived flowers, 
 Eternal in beauty, these exquisite hours. 
 
 I will pluck from my tree a cherry-blossom wand, 
 
 And carry it in my merciless hand. 
 
 So I will drive you, so bewitch your eyes, 
 
 With a beautiful thing that shall never grow wise. 
 
12 
 
 VIII— A SONG OF MORNING 
 
 THE starved priest must stay in his cold hills. 
 How can he walk in vineyards, 
 Where brown girls mock him 
 With kisses, and with the dance ! 
 You, O son of Silenus, must live in cities, 
 Where there is wine. 
 Where there are couches for rank flesh, 
 Where women walk in streets. 
 
 But I will be a conqueror. 
 
 Strong to starve and feast. 
 
 I will go up into the hills. 
 
 With club and flint I will fight hairy men. 
 
 I will break a head as I throw down a cup ; 
 
 I will spill my blood as I throw down wine at a feast ; 
 
 I will break mountain ice for my bath ; 
 
 I will lie upon cold rock, and I will dream. 
 
 Then I will come down into the cities, 
 Slim, but for my great sinews. 
 
 And I will walk in the streets of women. 
 The women will be behind their curtains, 
 And they will fear me. 
 
13 
 
 I will be strong to live beyond the law ; 
 I will be strong to live without the priest ; 
 I will be strong, no slave of couches. 
 
 I will be a conqueror, 
 Mighty to starve and feast. 
 
 IX. 
 
 HE who has lost soul's liberty 
 Concerns himself for ever with his property, 
 As, when the folk have lost the dance and song, 
 Women clean useless pots the whole day long. 
 
 Thank God for war and fire 
 
 To burn the silly objects of desire, 
 
 That from the ruin of a church thrown down 
 
 We see God clear and high above the town. 
 
14 
 
 X— MEDITATION AT KEW. 
 
 ALAS ! for all the pretty women who marry dull men, 
 Go into the suburbs and never come out again, 
 Who lose their pretty faces, and dim their pretty eyes, 
 Because no one has skill or courage to organize. 
 
 What do these pretty women suffer when they marry ? 
 They bear a boy who is like Uncle Harry, 
 A girl, who is like Aunt Eliza, and not new. 
 These old dull races must breed true. 
 
 I would enclose a common in the sun, 
 And let the young wives out to laugh and run ; 
 I would steal their dull clothes and go away. 
 And leave the pretty naked things to play. 
 
 Then I would make a contract with hard Fate 
 
 That they see all the men in the world and choose a mate, 
 
 And I would summon all the pipers in the town 
 
 That they dance with Love at a feast, and dance him down. 
 
 From the gay unions of choice 
 
 We'd have a race of splendid beauty, and of thrilling voice. 
 
 The World whips frank gay love with rods, 
 
 But frankly gaily shall we get the gods. 
 
15 
 
 XI— SONG TO THE YOUNG JOHN, 
 
 THE apple-blossomy king 
 Is lord of this new Spring; 
 He is the spirit of young joy, 
 My little yellow-headed boy. 
 
 His eyes are a bluebell wood, set in a boy's head. 
 
 His hair the white-gold ghost of sunlight from Springs dead. 
 
 The pink of apple-blossom is in his bonnie cheeks ; 
 
 I hear bird-song in sleepy glades, when the king speaks. 
 
 He moves like a young larch in a light wind ; 
 His body brings slim budding trees to mind. 
 How all my senses thrill to the dear treasure, 
 Till I must weep for sweet excess of pleasure. 
 
 The apple-blossomy king 
 Is lord of this new spring; 
 He is the spirit of young joy^ 
 My little yellow-headed boy. 
 
i6 
 
 XII— THE AFFINITY. 
 
 I HAVE to thank God I'm a woman, 
 For in these ordered days a woman only 
 Is free to be very hungry, very lonely. 
 
 It is sad for Feminism, but still clear 
 
 That man, more often than woman, is a pioneer. 
 
 If I would confide a new thought. 
 
 First to a man must it be brought. 
 
 Now, for our sins, it is my bitter fate 
 That such a man wills soon to be my mate. 
 And so of friendship is quick end : 
 When I have gained a love I lose a friend. 
 
 It is well within the order of things 
 
 That man should listen when his mate sings ; 
 
 But the true male never yet walked 
 
 Who liked to listen when his mate talked. 
 
 I would be married to a full man. 
 As would all women since the world began ; 
 But from a wealth of living I have proved 
 I must be silent, if I would be loved. 
 
17 
 
 Now of my silence I have much wealth, 
 
 I have to do my thinking all by stealth. 
 
 My thought may never see the day ; 
 
 My mind is like a catacomb where early Christians pray. 
 
 And of my silence I have much pain, 
 But of these pangs I have great gain ; 
 For I must take to drugs or drink. 
 Or I must write the things I think. 
 
 If my sex would let me speak, 
 
 I would be very lazy and most weak ; 
 
 I should speak only, and the things I spoke 
 
 Would fill the air a while, and clear like smoke. 
 
 The things I think now I write down, 
 
 And some day I will show them to the Town. 
 
 When I am sad I make thought clear ; 
 
 I can re-read it all next year. 
 
 I have to thank God I'm a woman, 
 For in these ordered days a woman only 
 Is free to be very hungry, very lonely. 
 
i8 
 
 XIII— THE CONTEMPLATIVE QUARRY. 
 
 MY Love is male and proper-man 
 And what he'd have he'd get by chase, 
 So I must cheat as women can 
 And keep my love from off my face. 
 Tis folly to my dawning thrifty thought 
 That I must run, who in the end am caught. 
 
 XIV— SPOKEN TO ADONIS. 
 
 HAVE you observed that one can measure 
 Poetic worth of words in terms of pleasure? 
 Honey and milk have been sweet food so long, 
 These words are naturalized in Song. 
 And from my joy in you the time is ripe 
 That I find lyric value for your pipe. 
 What tender pleasure do your lips invoke 
 Moving in gracious meditation as you smoke I 
 
19 
 
 XV— THE MUMMER. 
 
 STRICT I walk my ordered way 
 Through the strait and duteous day ; 
 The hours are nuns that summon me 
 To offices of huswifry. 
 Cups and cupboards, flagons, food 
 Are things of my solicitude. 
 No elfin Folly haply strays 
 Down my precise and well-swept ways. 
 
 When that compassionate lady Night 
 Shuts out a prison from my sight, 
 With other thrift I turn a key 
 Of the old chest of Memory. 
 And in my spacious dreams unfold 
 A flimsy stuff of green and gold, 
 And walk and wander in the dress 
 Of old delights, and tenderness. 
 
20 
 
 XVI— THE MARRIAGE. 
 
 WHAT a great battle you and I have fought ! 
 A fight of sticks and whips and swords, 
 A one-armed combat, 
 For each held the left hand pressed close to the heart, 
 To save the caskets from assault. 
 
 How tenderly we guarded them ; 
 
 I would keep mine and still have yours, 
 
 And you held fast to yours and coveted mine. 
 
 Could we have dropt the caskets 
 
 We would have thrown down weapons 
 
 And been at each other like apes. 
 
 Scratching, biting, hugging 
 
 In exasperation. 
 
 What a fight ! 
 
 Thank God that I was strong as you. 
 
 And you, though not my master, were my match. 
 
 How we panted ; we grew dizzy with rage. 
 
 We forgot everything but the fight and the love of the caskets. 
 
21 
 
 These we called by great names — 
 Personality, Liberty, Individuality. 
 
 Each fought for right to keep himself a slave 
 And to redeem his fellow. 
 How can this be done ? 
 
 But the fight ended. 
 
 For both was victory ; 
 
 For both there was defeat. 
 
 Through blood we saw the caskets on the floor. 
 
 Our jewels were revealed : 
 
 An ugly toad in mine. 
 
 While yours was filled with most contemptible small snakes. 
 
 One held my vanity, the other held your sloth. 
 
 The fight is over, and our eyes are clear. — 
 Good friend, shake hands. 
 
22 
 
 XVII— ARTIFICIALITY. 
 
 POOR body that was crushed in stays 
 Through many real-seeming days, 
 You are free in the grave. 
 You held a ghost 'neath roof and law 
 Well by contrivance and by wit and saw. 
 All storms that rage now strike your mould, 
 Now dead, now low, now cold ; 
 And air, turned foe, your ready breath forgot, 
 Shall wanton with you till you rot. 
 
 Poor bodies crushed in stays. 
 Think of the rotting days I 
 
 XVIII— SHIP NEAR SHOALS. 
 
 I HAVE been so misused by chaste men with one wife 
 That I would live with satyrs all my life. 
 Virtue has bound me with such infamy 
 That I must fly where Love himself is free, 
 And know all vice but that small vice of dignity. 
 
 Come Rags and Jades I so long as you have laughter, 
 Blow your shrill pipes, and I will follow after. 
 
23 
 
 XIX— THE REVOLT OF WIVES. 
 
 1WILL be neither man nor woman, 
 I will be just a human. 
 When the time comes for me to bear a son 
 With concentration shall the work be done. 
 My medium then is flesh and blood, 
 And by God's mercy shall the work be good. 
 
 If all of women's life were spent with child, 
 
 How were Earth's people and her area reconciled? 
 
 Nor for my very pleasure will I vex 
 
 My whole long life away in things of sex. 
 
 As in those good Victorian days 
 
 When teeeming women lived in stays. 
 
 We often find the moralist forgetting 
 Relation betwixt bearing and begetting. 
 What increase if all women should be chaste ? 
 But it is good all women keep a natural waist, 
 For a strong people's love of child 
 With narrow hips can not be reconciled. 
 
24 
 
 Show us the contract plain, that we may prove 
 If we are loved for children, or are loved for love. 
 Your children all our services compel. 
 But from love's charter do we now rebel. 
 If in our love you find such pleasure, 
 Pay us in freedom love's full measure. 
 
 We, vital women, are no more content 
 
 Bound, first to passion, then to sentiment. 
 
 Of you, the masters, slaves in our poor eyes 
 
 Who most are moved by women's tricks and lies, 
 
 We ask our freedom. In good sooth, 
 
 We only ask to know and speak the truth ! 
 
25 
 
 XX— THE FREE WOMAN. 
 
 WHAT was not done on earth by incapacity 
 Of old, was promised for the life to be. 
 But I will build a heaven which shall prove 
 A lovelier paradise 
 To your brave mortal eyes 
 Than the eternal tranquil promise of the Good. 
 For freedom I will give perfected love, 
 For which you shall not pay in shelter or in food. 
 For the work of my head and hands I will be paid, 
 But I take no fee to be wedded, or to remain a maid. 
 
 XXI^FROM POETS, WORKMEN, WOMEN, AND 
 CHILDREN IN ORPHANAGES. 
 
 WITH wine or with faith, with love or with song, 
 Let me be drunken all my life long. 
 On hills of ecstasy, in troughs of pain, 
 Never more sober, never more sane. 
 For I lived too long in a den 
 Of sane and solemn men. 
 Each merciless as a beast. 
 And my spirit was their feast. 
 They sucked my soul from me 
 All for the sake of holy Uniformity. 
 
26 
 
 XXII— THE FAITHFUL AMORIST. 
 
 AM I not the lover of Beauty 
 To follow her where I know she is hid 
 By the aroma of her pleasure ? 
 Yesterday I had pleasure of Helen, 
 Of white, of yellow hair. 
 But to-day a negress is my delight. 
 And Beauty is black. 
 
 There are some that are as small tradesmen. 
 
 To sell beauty in a shop, 
 
 Noting what has been desired, and acclaiming it eternally good. 
 
 So poets fill verses 
 
 For ever with the owl, the oak, and the nightingale, 
 
 I say the crow is a better bird than the nightingale. 
 
 Since to-day Beauty is black. 
 
 The lark sings flat 
 
 Of wearisome trees and spiritless fields. 
 But there is great music in the hyaena, 
 For there is pleasure in deserts. 
 
27 
 
 XXIII— TO A YOUNG BOY. 
 
 POOR son of strife — 
 Child of inequality and growth — 
 You will never learn ; you have only to live. 
 You will never know the peace of order. 
 Routine will crush you. 
 Safe toil has always thought of time, 
 But you will work in utter concentration 
 Fierce as fire. 
 
 You will find no steady excellence':! 
 
 You will spend your life in a ditch, grubbing for grains of gold. 
 
 Remember, my dear son, 
 
 That gold is gold. 
 
 You will find no steady virtue : 
 
 You will live sometimes with holy ecstasy, sometimes with shoddy sin. 
 
 You will keep no constant faith. 
 
 But with an agony of faithful longing you will hate a lie. 
 
 Life will give you no annuity, 
 
 You will always be at risk. 
 
 There is one technique, one hope and one excuse for such as you, 
 
 And that is courage. 
 
28 
 
 XXIV— EUGENICS. 
 
 IN this woman, whose business it is to prepare my dinner, 
 I find the most surprising sensitiveness to works of art. 
 With splendid qualities of sympathy and heart, 
 And now I learn her father was a sinner. 
 
 His lines were laid in unadventurous places ; 
 He was a tradesman in a little town. 
 But whiles, he laid the yardstick down, 
 And went and lost his money at the races. 
 
 The draper had his quiver very full : 
 
 At the thought of his thriftlessness my heart should harden. 
 
 But had he lived and died like a churchwarden, 
 
 I know my housekeeper had been dull. 
 
29 
 
 XXV—SEHNSUCHT. 
 
 BECAUSE of body*s hunger are we born, 
 And by contriving hunger are we fed ; 
 Because of hunger is our work well done, 
 As so are songs well sung, and things well said, 
 Desire and longing are the whips of God — 
 God save us all from death when we are fed. 
 
 XXVI— GENUFLECTION. 
 
 1MOST offend my Deity when I kneel ; 
 I have no profit from repeated prayers. 
 I know the law too perfect and too real 
 To swerve or falter for my small affairs. 
 Not till my ruinous fears begin 
 Do I ask God for freedom from my sin. 
 Self-fear is chiefest ally of the Devil, 
 And I fall straight from praying into evil. 
 
30 
 
 XXVII— COMMENT. 
 
 THE spirit of Mediocrity 
 Is, as the ant, conservative, 
 And this is as it well must be. 
 Else were the creature not alive. 
 
 The weakling clings to the paps of the Past, 
 Draws that assurM necessary food. 
 Young Power is strong to make a fast 
 Within a sparsely-berried wood. 
 
 Wherein, as Time and clearances allow, 
 He*ll tether a most fruitful milky cow, 
 From which all following Mediocrity 
 Will draw its strength to praise Rigidity. 
 
 XXVIII— THE DULL ENTERTAINMENT. 
 
 HERE is too much food 
 For the talk to be good, 
 And too much hurrying of menial feet, 
 And too kind proffering of things to eat. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 No sleepy poison is more strong to kill 
 Than jaded, weak, and vascillating will. 
 God send us power to make decision 
 With muscular, clean, fierce precision. 
 In life and song 
 Give us the might 
 To dare to be wrong 
 Who feared we were not right. 
 Regenerating days begin 
 When I, who made no choice, choose even sin. 
 
31 
 
 XXX— THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT. 
 
 WHEN I love most — I am turned psalmist. 
 I have expression from my wrong. 
 I bay like a ghost-scenting hound, 
 ** Where is God hid? for I would smite him with a song." 
 Come back Jehovah, 
 Give me cover. 
 Come back old god, 
 For I have lost my lover. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 OUT of the womb of Mother Sin, 
 With stained and sensitive skin, 
 Is born the strong solitary soul 
 Who is master of power and of control. 
 Fearlessness did him beget ; 
 Nor let the moralist forget, 
 The child of Sin and Courage well may be 
 Nobler than any child of timid Purity. 
 
32 
 
 XXXII— THE SLIGHTED LADY. 
 
 THERE was a man who won a beautiful woman. 
 Not only was she lovely, and shaped like a woman, 
 But she had a beautiful mind. 
 She understood everything the man said to her, 
 She listened and smiled, 
 
 And the man possessed her and grew in ecstasy, 
 And he talked while the woman listened and smiled. 
 
 But there came a day when the woman understood even 
 
 more than the man had said ; 
 Then she spoke, and the man, sated with possession, and 
 
 weary with words, slept. 
 He slept on the threshold of his house. 
 The woman was within, in a small room. 
 
 Then to the window of her room 
 Came a young lover with his lute, 
 And thus he sang ; 
 
 *' O, beautiful woman, who can perfect my dreams, 
 Take my soul into your hands 
 Like a clear crystal ball. 
 
33 
 
 Warm it to softness at your breast, 
 
 And shape it as you will. 
 
 We two shall sing together living songs, 
 
 And walk our Paradise, in an eternal noon — 
 
 Come, my Desire, I wait.'* 
 
 But the woman, remembering the sleeper and her faith, 
 
 Shook her good head, to keep the longing from her eyes, 
 
 At which the lover sang again, and with such lusty rapture 
 
 That the sleeper waked. 
 
 And, listening to the song, he said : 
 
 ** My woman has bewitched this man — 
 
 He is seduced. 
 
 What folly does he sing ? 
 
 This woman is no goddess, but my wife ; 
 
 And no perfection, but the keeper of my house.'* 
 
 Whereat the woman said within her heart ; 
 
 ** My husband has not looked at me for many days — 
 
 He has forgot that flesh is warm. 
 
 And that the spirit hungers. 
 
 I have waited long within the house ; 
 
 I freeze with dumbness, and I go." 
 
 Then she stept down from her high window 
 
 And walked with her young lover, singing to his lute. 
 
34 
 
 XXXIII— GIFT TO A JADE. 
 
 FOR love he offered me his perfect world. 
 This world was so constricted, and so small, 
 It had no sort of loveliness at all, 
 And I flung back the little silly ball. 
 At that cold moralist I hotly hurled, 
 His perfect pure symmetrical small world. 
 
 XXXIV— SONG. 
 
 I WAS so chill, and overworn, and sad, 
 To be a lady was the only joy I had. 
 I walked the street as silent as a mouse. 
 Buying fine clothes, and fittings for the house. 
 
 But since I saw my love 
 I wear a simple dress, 
 And happily I move 
 Forgetting weariness. 
 
35 
 
 XXXV— MAGNETISM. 
 
 THE little king 
 Came preening to the presence of the great. 
 Who wore no jewelled thing 
 To show imperial state. 
 Had the small king been wise, 
 He'd read dominion in a mummer's eyes. 
 
 The peacock princeling spoke his will, 
 
 While the great lord sat still. 
 
 But steady eyes had filched a soul away : 
 
 A braggart withered in his husk that day. 
 
 Had the great king been wise, 
 
 He'd read dominion in a mummer's eyes. 
 
36 
 
 XXXVI— FRIEND CATO. 
 
 WHEN the master sits at ease 
 He joys in generalities ; 
 
 In aphorisms concerning all things human, 
 But most of all concerning woman. 
 Saying, *' Women are this or that.*- 
 Woman is round, or high, or square, or flat.'* 
 
 Sir, a shepherd knows his sheep apart, 
 And mothers know young babes by heart. 
 To taste no little shade of difference 
 Is sign of undiscerning sense. 
 Cato, in pity, hear our just demur, 
 Man, to be critic, must be conoisseur. 
 
37 
 
 XXXVII— SUSANNAH IN THE MORNING. 
 
 WHEN first I saw him I was chaste and good, 
 And he, how ruthless, pardoned not the mood. 
 From one quick look 1 knew him dear, 
 And gave the highest tribute of my fear. 
 So I played woman to his male : 
 How better could his power prevail ! 
 But his hot sense showed quick surprise 
 At the slow challenge of my shaded eyes. 
 In a closed room what fires may burn ! 
 O my cold lover will you not return ? 
 To the high night I fling my prayer : 
 Master of chariots drive me in the air ! 
 
 XXXVIII— DEDICATION. 
 
 {WALKED when the wood was full of minstrelry. 
 A pretty prince came down to talk with me. 
 He spoke so kindly, and quite loud :' 
 Then he was gone, quick as high cloud. 
 That he came here is such a happy thing, 
 I sit quite still in the wood and sing. 
 
as 
 
 XXXIX— THE TIRED MAN. 
 
 T AM a quiet gentleman, 
 
 And I would sit and dream ; 
 But my wife is on the hillside, 
 Wild as a hill-stream. 
 
 I am a quiet gentleman. 
 And I would sit and think ; 
 
 But my wife is walking the whirlwind 
 Through night as black as ink. 
 
 O, give me a woman of my race 
 
 As well controlled as I, 
 And let us sit by the fire. 
 
 Patient till we die ! 
 
39 
 
 XL— SELF ANALYSIS. 
 
 THE tumult of my fretted mind 
 Gives me expression of a kind ; 
 But it is faulty, harsh, not plain — 
 My work has the incompetence of pain. 
 
 I am consumed with slow fire, 
 
 For righteousness is my desire; 
 
 Towards that good goal I cannot whip my will, 
 
 I am a tired horse that jibs upon a hill. 
 
 I desire Virtue, though I love her not — 
 I have no faith in her when she is got : 
 I fear that she will bind and make me slave, 
 And send me songless to the sullen grave. 
 
 I am like a man who fears to take a wife, 
 And frets his soul with wantons all his life. 
 With rich unholy foods I stuff my maw ; 
 When I am sick, then I believe in law. 
 
A 7 
 
 40 
 
 I fear the whiteness of straight ways — 
 I think there is no colour in unsullied days. 
 My silly sins I take for my heart's ease, 
 And know my beauty in the end disease. 
 
 Of old there were great heroes, strong in fight, 
 Who, tense and sinless, kept a fire alight : 
 God of our hope, in their great name, 
 Give me the straight and ordered flame. 
 
 XLI— TO D. M. 
 
 T WITH fine words wear all my life away. 
 
 And lose good purpose with the things I say, 
 Guide me, kind silent woman, that I give 
 
 One deed for twice ten thousand words, and so I live. 
 
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